Lucky Seven: Country life — Ryan Bingham's journey takes him to Tricky Falls

"Everything in this business is a surprise," husky-voiced singer-songwriter Ryan Bingham says. "From one thing to another, any time I think I know what is going to happen, I get a kick in the ass."

He used to get them from the bucking bulls on the rodeo circuit when he was a teeanger. Then he got them from a music industry that didn't quite know what to make of Bingham's open, honest songs, which veered musically from dirt-in-your-boots country to carousing rock 'n' roll to soul-baring folk.

Then along came "The Weary Kind," the ballad that Bingham, who'll play Tricky Falls on Thursday, wrote for Jeff Bridges to sing in the 2009 film drama "Crazy Heart," about a broken-down country singer. Life changed for Bingham after that. He won an Academy Award, Grammy Award and Golden Globe Award for the song.

Suddenly, people who'd never heard of Ryan Bingham knew who he was, even if they'd never heard any of his other songs. The Americana Music Association gave him its artist of the year award in 2010. The surge in popularity didn't affect the music or the music maker, or so he said in an interview last fall with the El Paso Times.

"It was a hell of an experience and opportunity. It opened a lot of doors with me as far as meeting people in music," he said then. "But at the end of the day, when it was over, it was over. It wasn't like I was in a new Cadillac driving around, or flying in a private jet. I was back in a van playing the same old venues.

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Bingham, who cut his 2010 album "Junky Star" over three days during the "Crazy Heart" sessions, has continued to explore that mix of country, rock and folk since the Oscar, but he's been doing it lately on his own record label, Axster/Bingham Records, which he formed two years ago with his wife, Anna Axster.

"We do things on our own terms, do the things we want to, not the thing we don't want to, having that choice and freedom to do things on our own terms," he said recently from Los Angeles, where the Hobbs native now makes his home.

That includes writing and recording the songs for "Tomorrowland," the biggest-sounding, most rock 'n' roll, outward-looking of Bingham's six albums. Released last year, it's also the first on the Axster/Bingham label. Paste magazine called it "a good, ol' fashioned rock anthem of kiss-my-asschaps autonomy," adding its rocking anthems are "no place for the weary kind." Lone Star Music magazine described it as "the sound of Bingham unleashed."

Its 13 songs are as inspired by Jimmy Page as they are Johnny Cash. Some have strings. Others have distortion. Many of the new songs, like "Rising of the Ghetto" and "Western Shore," deal with bigger, populist world views, the result, no doubt, of jumping on that Academy Award gravy train a few years ago.

Now Bingham is playing those new songs on the road, the first time he's toured without his longtime backing band, the Dead Horses. It's not a breakup, he said, more a matter of timing, with one member planning to get married and another helping a sibling open a club.

"They didn't breakup, they're more or less taking a break," said the singer, who has been looking forward to working with different musicians from different musical backgrounds, a furthering of the freedom he had making "Tomorrowland" on his own terms.

"I always wanted to experiment with different things, playing with guys in L.A.," he said, adding "there are so many great musicians in L.A."

It's a band, he said, that may better serve the rockier edge of the new album. "This group, just from jamming at home, is loose and Stonesy and very, very kind of rock 'n' roll," he said. "They play a lot of different styles of music and bring different elements into it. Dead Horses had pretty much more of a specific style. We all played it."

The musical restlessness that has been a hallmark of Bingham's career may be traceable to a tumultuous life that began on March 31, 1981. The Hobbs native's family moved around - a lot - mostly in Texas, as his father went from job to job, mostly working on oil fields or ranches. It was a pattern that continued for Bingham after he struck out on his own at 17 to make it as a rodeo rider.

"I don't think I lived in the same town more than two or three years since I was a kid," he said, ticking off some of the "dozen or so" cities and towns in which he lived during that period, including Midland, Odessa, Lubbock, Houston, Laredo, Fort Worth and Stephenville.

"A lot of them I didn't live in, I just lived out of a car and passed through them," he said. "It was a f****** nightmare."

One way he relieved those nightmares was through songwriting. Bingham started writing his own songs and performing while he was on the rodeo circuit, but wasn't sure where to turn for guidance or encouragement. A stint in jail at age 13 provided some incentive to stay out of trouble.

"I'd kind of been around some s***** characters in my life," he said. "For me, being a young kid who was lost out there, I had a handful of songs, but I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't have an example of somebody who I could look at it and go, 'This is how to do it, this is something you might be able to do wth my life.'"

One of the first to do that was Joe Ely, the itinerant Lubbock country-rock bard who was one of the first to help show Bingham the way. "He was kind of one of the first male figures in my life that really set an example for me," Bingham said of Ely, who'll also perform at Tricky Falls on March 21.

Another Texas music legend, Terry Allen, performed Bingham's wedding ceremony in 2009 on a beach in Malibu. "The thing that struck me about (Ryan) is that there's really nothing superficial about his songs," Allen told Lone Star Music last year.

Bingham, 31, eventually traded a saddle for a guitar, released two albums independently before Lost Highway Records, part of the massive Universal Music Group, signed him in 2007. He released three albums for the label, including the downbeat "Junky Star," which was produced during the "Crazy Heart" sessions with T Bone Burnett.

Bingham wanted more control over what he was doing, and formed Axster/Bingham with that in mind. While no longer on the Lost Highway label, "Tomorrowland" is being distributed by Lost Highway, an arrangement that allows him to work with many of the label people he admired, minus the corporate mentality of the Universal Music Group overseers.

Bingham says he prefers the slow and steady approach to selling the album, rather than an emphasis on first-week sales of the bigger label. "Sales have been steady and solid, it's not like this big, crazy jump where you think it's going to be No. 1," he said. "I didn't have that expectation to begin with. It's been steady and solid and comfortable. I'm happy."

To give you an idea how far Bingham has come creatively and commercially since "The Weary Kind" put him on the map, he last performed here in 2009, a free show at Whiskey Dicks, the East Side country music bar. Thursday's show, with L.A. duo Honeyhoney opening, will be a ticketed event — at $21 a pop — and his first at Tricky Falls, a rock club partially owned by At the Drive-In's Jim Ward.

That may also be a measure of how far El Paso has come as a concert market since "The Weary Kind" made a star of Bingham nearly four years ago. Tricky Falls didn't open until September 2011.

"It's cool," he said. "I always wanted to play (El Paso), but it was tough to find a venue there. It's kind of nice finding that. Every band in the country goes through El Paso on I-10. They might as well stop and play there as well."

Doug Pullen may be reached at dpullen@elpasotimes.com; 915-546-6397. Read Pullen My Blog at elpasotimes.com/blogs. Follow him on Twitter at @dougpullen and Facebook at facebook.com/dougpulleneptimes.

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